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Hawke blinks.
A duel?
The Arishok stares down at him with those inhuman eyes, brown-black and dark as the silt on the shores of the river where he used to play when he was a child. Glinting, even, with the same specks of light.
“Hawke,” Fenris murmurs.
Take the offer, avoid untold bloodshed. No. More likely, you haven’t a toad’s chance of beating him, you muttonhead, do the sensible thing and turn him down.
The latter sentiment is, of course, the smarter play. Together, they can all fill in each other’s weaknesses. And against the Qunari, Hawke’s are many. For one, they’re about as offended by dagger-strikes as they would be by a hapless butterfly colliding with them mid-flight. Second, he hasn’t the first bloody idea what in the Void they’re made of, but his poisons always seem to do quite the opposite of what he’d intended.
Hawke knows he hasn’t long to decide. He uses that time to try and think of a plan, figuring if he can’t, then he’ll…agree to it anyway. If there is even the smallest chance of sparing them—Isabela, Anders, Aveline and Fenris, all of whom have already beaten and battered their way here, and bear the marks of it now, the bruises, the fatigue…
If any of them fall to the Qunari and there was a chance, even the glimmer of a chance he could have prevented it, he knows he’ll never forgive himself.
All at once he comes up with a plan. A bad plan, with an unknown and unknowable chance of success, but a plan nonetheless. Hawke draws himself up. “All right. I accept.”
The Arishok’s silt-brown eyes narrow a little, their intensity dimming in favor of approval. “Very well. Approach when you are ready.”
Then he brushes past. Hawke is not a small man, yet for a second the shadow cast by the Arishok’s enormous frame subsumes him completely.
Hawke decides he’s going to die, and decides he might as well make the Qunari fight for it anyway.
He guides his stunned companions to the back of the hall, in front of all the nobles who have gathered in the small room just behind the double doors. “Listen, I know this seems like an idiotic idea—“
“It most certainly does,” Aveline snaps.
He sighs. “Yes. Well, I have a plan.” An awful plan. “But you all must promise me you won’t interfere. No matter what it looks like out there.”
Anders has not managed anger, and like Isabela, he gazes at Hawke with a kind of sick horror. “If you’ve got a sword through your gut, I’m not just going to stand back and let you bleed out.”
“Yes, you will, because even with a sword through my gut I can still kill people. Or Qunari.” Hawke hears the authority hardening in his voice like a lake freezing over. It’s a relatively new phenomenon, and he can’t say where it came from, but it isn’t unwelcome. “But if you interfere, you deprive me of that chance, and it will all have been for nothing. The Qunari will turn on you and the rest of Kirkwall. So you let me bleed.”
Anders doesn’t reply, but Hawke recognizes the look in his eye, that sullen glimmer he gets. I will not accept this. Hawke exhales. “Aveline, do me a favor and stop him if he tries, would you?”
“Right.” She nods. “Anders, you keep your hands at your sides, or you’ll wake up on the floor with a nasty headache. You hear me?”
At least Aveline understands what he’s trying to do, and he can see her initial anger has faded, that she’s resigned now but firm. He knows for a fact if she were given the same offer she’d have agreed to the duel in a heartbeat.
Isabela has also mastered herself, to an extent. “Here.” She hands him a half-dozen tiny vials corked tight. “In case you need them.”
He does, having exhausted most of his alchemical tricks in the harrowing journey to the keep, and he takes them with a relief so great it almost makes him giddy, slips them into the reinforced pouch at his waist. “Thank you.”
“He’s going to kill you.”
Right. Fenris.
Hawke dredges up half a grin. “Thanks so much, your confidence is really inspiring—“
“This is not something to laugh about, Hawke!” Fenris is angry, really angry. “A race of beings twice as strong as any man, who train their soldiers from the time they’re children, and you face their warchief!”
“Yes, I do know that.” He hesitates. But this might be the last time they ever get to speak, the last time— “I couldn’t—I couldn’t let all of you risk your lives on this. Not when I have a chance to end it myself.”
“You don’t have a chance,” Fenris says curtly. “I’ve already told you. The Arishok is going to kill you.”
“I have a plan.” A really, truly terrible plan. “Please trust me. Please, Fenris.” Hawke takes his hand. “I’m not just throwing myself into the sea. I’m trying to help.”
Fenris stays for a moment, their fingers curled gently around each other. Then he takes his hand back and folds his arms. “I trust you, Hawke, but if you seek my forgiveness, you’ll have to claim it after the battle.”
That’s about as good as he can expect. Then all of a sudden it becomes unbearable, standing here so close to those he cares about and imagining them taken by the Qun, chained, subjugated—re-educated—
He turns and strides out across the floor.
As he’s walking he thinks he should have kissed Fenris one last time, because he won’t get the chance again (might, but won’t). Then he decides that probably would have made Fenris even angrier. So instead he just glides through the hall. The terror is there, distant and not, dispersed in his focus like a disturbed riverbed clouding the water. Heat rises up his neck and into his face, and his stomach is as sick as it’s ever been, if not sicker. What is he doing? He can’t win. In only a few moments he’ll be dying, screaming in agony with a square-bladed longsword stuck through his gut, pinning him to the floor. The world tilts and spins around him even as he stops, standing in the middle of the hall, flanked by two stone pillars. The Arishok stands opposite, his sword in one hand, an axe in the other. The situation filters away some of the muddy terror, and Hawke begins to assess, as he does before any battle. Pillars are wide enough to hide me, can probably get a second’s cover behind those to throw him off. He’s big, but that doesn’t mean what it usually does, he’s their warchief, he’ll be—
The Arishok charges.
—fast, fast, shit— Hawke dives, rolls and keeps rolling to get out of the Arishok’s enormous bloody reach. There’s a great clang, and something nicks his cheek. A stone chip, flung up from the gouge that black steel battleaxe has just taken out of the floor.
Hawke can’t close. If he closes he’s dead. Inside the Arishok’s guard he might do some damage but getting there will kill him. The Arishok swivels, his longsword whipping around, sweeping low like a wheat scythe.
Hawke rolls again, feels the wind that splits around the deadly edge. He needs to vanish, now. So while the Arishok tugs the great axe out of the floor, he draws a vial from his belt and smashes it.
White smoke billows out, chalky and dry. One of Isabela’s vials—his own are oily and dark. He darts behind a pillar, choosing the one just behind the Arishok. Surely his opponent won’t expect him to be so stupid. One smoke bomb gone. He got six from Isabela, had two of his own remaining. Which leaves him with seven now. Is that enough to bring his plan to fruition?
Hawke tugs a throwing knife from the file at his lower back. He knew he couldn’t close with the Arishok. Knew that at range he’d never be able to make the kill, not with throwing knives. Knew that any poison he tried would be useless.
So his plan is to try all of them. All at once.
Isabela’s smoke is still boisterously gushing out—her formula’s long-lasting, though he prefers his own for how it mucks up the airway of anyone who doesn’t know to hold their breath. The Arishok hasn’t moved, or Hawke would have heard the faint jangling of the chains that wreathe his armor (which look to be mostly decorative—perhaps some analogy about devotion to a philosophy that keeps his so-called “savage” nature in check). It appears that in battle the warchief favors patience and caution. Would he favored those things in life as well.
Hawke uncorks the first tiny bottle with his teeth (very carefully, as always). The layer of oil at the bottom coats the glass so the poison slides out smoothly, but when it hits the metal blade it sticks. This one is supposed to make the heart beat twice as fast as normal. Not that it’ll do a bloody thing, of course, but he has to start somewhere. Hawke peers around the pillar as the smoke starts to dissipate. The Arishok’s back is to him, the pale skin exposed, knotted muscle beneath…. Hawke hikes the knife back and throws.
As soon as the blade hits, the Arishok whirls and charges.
Shit. Hawke wraps himself around the pillar and then pushes off it, skating back out into the center of the room. He goes again for his pouch as the Arishok pursues, a battering ram of a creature with a pair of razor-sharp jaws that will cut him in three if he lets them snap shut.
Another smashed vial (six left now), a gush of smoke. Isabela’s again. Hawke doesn’t turn—never, ever show your back to the enemy—but he continues to retreat as the Arishok stills again, waiting. Again he ducks behind a pillar, and draws a second poison. Maybe two will be enough. Maybe all of them together will be totally ineffective. Maybe instead of killing the Arishok it’ll make him immortal, and he’ll rule over the Marches for a thousand thousand years. How could you do this, Hawke? How could you make him so powerful? Hawke grins. Knowing his bloody luck, that’ll be the end result. Still, he creeps out from behind the pillar, fans out to one side—to his right, toward the Qunari lined up at the base of the stairs, so if the Arishok’s momentum takes him too far forward he’ll trample his own men rather than Hawke’s friends.
There’s a disturbance in the smoke, and the Arishok looms.
That’s the problem with this formulation—it’s light, prone to eddies and dark shadows that stand out inside the white. Hawke throws the dagger, which hits, not that it matters, because it was the wrong decision. His weight is forward now, and the time it takes to shift it will be too long. He has only time to pray the Arishok is hesitant to endanger the karasaad standing firm behind his opponent—
His heel lashes out. High. Hawke rotates. Not fast enough. The heel smashes into his hip.
Hawke is hard to move. Last he checked he weight about seventeen stone. A dragon’s tail will send him flying, of course, but an abomination won’t, or a templar, or even a karasaad.
The Arishok’s kick lifts him of his feet, sends him tumbling across the floor. As he lands, he discovers smoke is billowing out from his pouch. His smashed pouch.
Shit.
White dust mixed with the thick dark substance of his own formula. So close to the epicenter, the explosion of irritants makes him cough, which just sucks more of it into his lungs. Shit. Shit. He squeezes his eyes closed, shuts himself up for a second, and listens. No jangling. The Arishok waits once more. Not worth wading into the middle of all this, not when he can wait a moment to kill Hawke under less irksome conditions.
Tears prick in Hawke’s eyes as he strains to keep his coughing to a minimum. He is hidden now, but when the smoke starts to clear the Arishok will be on him for good. No more quick disappearances. Stupid, Hawke thinks to himself, how could he have been so stupid? He’s used to engaging multiple opponents, who are too distracted by his friends to focus on him. But the Arishok has no distractions. Of course he would notice where Hawke was hiding his smoke bombs, and of course he would nullify that advantage.
Three knives this time, between the fingers of one hand, and Hawke coats them each with a different poison. He has to close. Won’t get the space to throw them one by one. He needs to see the Arishok for that, and if that happens the Arishok will also see him, and he’ll be on his heels anyway. Best to attack now, out of the smoke. At least he’ll have some semblance of surprise.
Before he gets cut in half, anyway. But it will be a valiant effort, which is really more than he was expecting from this whole mess.
Tightening his throat against another coughing fit, he darts forward.
The Arishok catches his approach, and sweeps with the axe. Hawke leaps over it, already going to ground in anticipation of the backswing. On the way he manages to jam the three small knives into the thick muscle of the Arishok’s back, below his first effort.
The axe passes over him. It is followed by a vicious downward stab from the square-bladed longsword. Shit. Hawke rolls away from it, up to a crouch.
Now it’s time to fight. If he can stay alive long enough, the poisons might work. Or he might get killed before then. Or the poisons might never work, and he’ll get killed anyway. Hawke tries to face the fact with a sort of resigned nonchalance. Instead all he can dredge up is muted terror and the inevitable regret—he should have kissed Fenris, damn it all, that was his last bloody chance—
The Arishok advances.
Hawke has fought plenty of Tal-Vashoth, but his battles with true Qunari are almost entirely limited to tonight, and he’s not familiar with their martial style. The basics of it come through easy enough—choppy movements, strength and precision taking the place of fluidity. The Arishok is charging once more, though it's controlled rather than reckless—that enormous body of his already gives him plenty enough momentum. Hawke sidesteps, his feet crossing over each other for one perilous moment. Normally he'd have the half-second to gain his footing again. But this is not a normal fight.
The Arishok is there, and ready. The battleaxe swings.
Hawke leans back as best he can, folding nearly in half. The blade shears through his armor, across his left ribs, and takes a shallow gouge out of him. The spike-tip of the axe leaves another such gouge a few inches higher.
Ouch.
His exclamation of pain turns into a cough, his throat still clogged with the residue of smoke. But with a great straining of his core muscles, he manages to stay upright. The longsword follows (the longsword always follows, Hawke notes) in a powerful thrust. But Hawke's dagger is in his hand. The twelve-inch blade won't budge a battleaxe but it diverts the longsword and gives Hawke enough leverage to twist himself out of the way. The Arishok is already slipping into another strike—a piece of the Qunari martial form; Hawke sees the instant of transition, the position in which the last strike ended shifting just a little into the stance that begins its successor. He needs to dodge. He can't keep dodging. He needs to get away. He can't get away.
The point of the battleaxe dives down like a spear. Overhead stab. With the fat axe-blades on either side, Hawke can go only back. As soon as his weight is on his rear foot the Arishok extends, heedless of leaving himself exposed—and why not? Why not, with an opponent so small, so inconsequential? The longsword whips out in a wide, fast slash that comes from the shoulder, to lend speed to the blow.
No safe place to go except back, again. So Hawke steps once more away, his balance hopelessly compromised, little more than fortune keeping him upright.
The battleaxe.
Another wide slash. High, and slower this time, with such a heavy weapon. Not that it matters. Hawke has nowhere to go. He steps back, prays his balance will hold. And starts to fall.
Perhaps fortune guides him after all. If he weren't falling on his ass, the great weapon might have ripped apart his throat. As it is, the edge catches him in the cheek, slicing it open and bashing half his teeth in.
Blood bursts into his mouth as he goes to the ground. Longsword. The longsword always follows. He doesn't need to look, just rolls away, heaves in a breath and inhales blood, coughs it up. Something's nicked his ear too. That will be the sword-slash he just dodged.
To his feet. The Arishok is coming again. There's a quality about his movement Hawke both envies and fears, and as he reads the next attack he tries to name it—
There's too much blood in his mouth, so he swallows it even as he smiles.
Certainty.
The Arishok assesses the situation, then decides what must be done. No—what must be done is already known to him. There is no need to decide, no precious time wasted choosing a strike. That's why, for such a great mass of flesh—Hawke swivels away from the axe, levers the longsword to one side with his dagger, metal screeching on metal—the warchief is so bloody fast. The axe again, odd strike, looks like an overhead stab but turns into a broad, high slash. Hawke gets under it. The longsword thrusts, low, and Hawke diverts it just outside his hip, looks for the transition point between strikes.
By the time he's realized there isn't one, it's too late.
He never drew his second dagger—better mobility with a free hand. So now he has to block with his body. The axe whips back with devastating force—setting up a backhand, should have been obvious, but the terror is clouding his mind—and he offers his shoulder to it. I'm going to lose my arm, he thinks faintly. I'm going to lose it for good.
The axe smashes into him.
He discovers then it's not nearly as sharp as it could be, as much a bludgeoning weapon as a slashing one. It cuts through his muscle but doesn't sever the bone, just—an explosion of pain—shatters it, and he's thrown to the ground, nearly stabbing himself with his own dagger. The longsword. The longsword follows. He rolls, his right arm dragging weakly behind him. He can't bring it in to himself. It just doesn't work anymore. To stand he'll have to drop the dagger. Too slow to push off the floor from a fist still wrapped around a hilt.
Is it worth it? He's up on one knee, then off again as the axe smashes into the floor where he just was. The sword swoops gracefully down, screeches across his own narrow blade, takes a slice out of his thigh anyway. On the ground he's dead. On his feet he's...still dead, but not quite as soon. He swallows another thick mouthful of blood (going to regret that later, or not, since there is no later) and drops the dagger. The battleaxe crashes down, and he hikes his bad arm out of the way from the shoulder, plants his hand on the ground, and rises to his feet. At the back of the room he sees Anders, stricken, his elbow caught in Aveline's firm grip.
The slice in Hawke's thigh burns suddenly—deeper than he'd thought, shouldn't have put the weight on it, a bad mistake—and as his body compensates, straining to keep him upright, something in his hip...gives.
The same hip that absorbed a kick from the Arishok. Hawke gasps as his leg twists and buckles under him. The shift fortuitously puts him in a better position to duck the battleaxe, as well as (less fortuitously) a better position to take the Arishok's knee in his face.
An armored knee, no less. The metal plate caves his nose in, and blood cascades down his throat. Half he swallows and half he coughs up, strings of red saliva spitting out between his swollen lips and the flaps of his cut cheek. He's on the ground again—longsword, longsword—he rolls to a knee, splays his good hand, and comes up on his feet. Something hurts, something new. Did the sword get him? Where is the injury?
A hopping pivot to avoid the axe. He's got the measure of his bad leg now, knows how much he can give it without risking a collapse. The Arishok advances with footwork precise and discrete. Hawke staggers back, arcs away from the sword-slash. Then he catches a glimpse of something on the floor behind the Arishok. Looks like—
Fingers.
Hawke glances down at himself. Half his hand is gone, sheared off by the longsword's deadly edge.
The right hand. Thank the Maker, he thinks. Could have been my left. His fourth and fifth fingers are gone, as well as most of his third and a chunk of his wrist. He tries to breathe, chokes on blood. Swallows it.
The axe sweeps up. Hawke swivels—too much on the bad leg—slides his other foot out and catches himself. The longsword is behind him. Shit.
The muscle memory takes over. His legs bend and then unfold, his left arm extended, and he flips back, the blade passing beneath him. Normally he lands on two hands, but his right arm is dead weight right now, and anyway he only has one and a half hands left. His left arm screams in protest as it supports him entirely. But he heaves his body over and down. The Arishok slows, caught off-guard.
If Hawke had a killing blow he'd take it. But there is no killing blow with Qunari, unless, like Fenris, you wield a weapon as tall as you—they're simply too big. Instead Hawke goes to the row of vials at his waist and plucks one from its slot. That's all he has time for before the Arishok is charging again. Shit. He goes to uncork it with his teeth. No time. He needs the free hand—an extra point of contact, with one of his legs compromised.
As the Arishok swings, Hawke steps aside, crushes the bottle between his teeth, and swallows.
He's delighted to find it doesn't hurt going down. The glass shards certainly cut up his tongue, the roof of his mouth, his inner cheek. But his throat feels no pain. Perhaps the shards are carried too swiftly on the glut of blood he swallows with them. Or perhaps his body has decided there is no time for more pain right now. A fraction less focus and the Arishok will cut him down. This concoction will make him tire faster, but he will also bleed less, which—the sword, a thrust, he pivots—from the liberal splashes of red decorating the floor, he suspects might fast become a problem.
The Arishok pursues him across the hall with quick, choppy steps. Hawke lurches, glides, and rolls. He discovers he's found the rhythm of the Qunari martial style, the intervals between strikes, how to judge where the next strike will go by which muscles tighten, since he can't use the direction of the Arishok's gaze; those silt-black eyes seem always to be piercing straight through him. The Arishok pushes forward, and Hawke circles back. He's found the rhythm.
But he sees how close the two great weapons shear to him, feels how his leg shakes, how his breathing bubbles and heaves as more blood pumps down his throat. The rhythm beats and beats, the Arishok's steps a thudding counterpoint to Hawke's weaving dance. They will converge, soon. And when they do, Hawke sees that he is going to die. He stumbles once, the strength gone from his leg. Goes to the inside of the Arishok rather than the outside in his recovery. A gamble, one with a fatal price, should he lose. But it works.
At the back of the room he sees Aveline still holding Anders's arm, but now she's got her other hand on Fenris, who seems caught mid-step.
The terror on his face breaks Hawke's heart in half.
Dodge. Pivot. Soon. It'll happen soon. Go to ground, roll, come back up. The Arishok's also got the measure of Hawke by now. Must also be able to see the rhythm, to feel its convergence approaching. Won't be long. Duck. Sidestep. Arch back—
Not far enough.
The Arishok extends just a couple of inches. And that's all it takes. The spike of the axe catches Hawke's eye, ripping it open, scoring a deep gouge in his forehead. Hawke staggers, about to fall over, heaves himself forward. Too much compensation. He folds himself nearly in half. Shit. The longsword. The longsword. The longsword always follows.
He watches it come up, the square end shining as it glides over the stone floor. Like a bright silver trout darting over the riverbed.
He thinks of Lothering.
The sword takes him in the gut and punches through his back. The Arishok lets out a roar of triumph and—no—
Hawke didn't think he had the energy left but the cry of agony tears out of him, on and on, as the Arishok lifts him into the air. The flat guard of the sword presses into him on either side of the wound, bearing his entire weight. Someone shouts his name. More than one someone. Who is it? He tries to look but his eye hurts, hurts—no, doesn't hurt, it's just gone, crushed by that battleaxe. He hangs there, his scream of pain winnowing down to a high moan. It's done. Why did he think he had even the smallest chance? How could he, against an opponent who can hoist his entire seventeen stone in the air one-handed?
The blade jars, and Hawke tries to cry out again and whimpers instead. His half-severed hand swings below him, and twirling streams of blood splash down onto it from his pierced gut, dripping off his two remaining fingers and onto the stone next to the Arishok's boot. He's finished. His body is destroyed. At least that is a small mercy; it will not take him very long to die.
Then suddenly he is falling. He tries to put out an arm to break the impact, but the pommel of the longsword still hits something, the blade jarring again inside him. A gurgle of pain, blood bubbling from his lips. It's filling his mouth again, and he swallows weakly.
The Arishok lies on the ground beside him, heaving in shallow, rapid breaths.
The truth of the situation flares before him like the resurgence of a dying ember, burning away the black of night. It worked. The poisons worked. He'd forgotten about them completely. But they didn't work fast enough—at this rate he'll be dead before the Arishok.
He can't allow that. If the Arishok wins the Qunari will take Isabela, they'll take Anders and Aveline and Fenris. Hawke draws his second dagger and crawls closer. He leaves the sword. Probably slicing his insides to ribbons, but it's keeping the blood in, and he needs that more right now. The Arishok's eyes might be fixed on him, or they might not, as impenetrable as ever, two sparkling hollows of wet earth. Hawke jams his fingertips into the warchief's neck, searching at the edge of the muscle. What if Qunari are different than humans? What if they don't have a great pulsing vessel there? He hasn't time to search for another one. But no, there it is, the tortured, bounding throb jumping irregularly against the pads of his fingers. That's the poisons' work. He braces the dagger against his bad hand and sticks it in the vessel. Might slice himself too by accident. Doesn't matter. Opens up a long, messy slit.
Good. That's one. The hall is silent, he realizes. Everyone's staring at him. How embarrassing. He digs under the Arishok's head, raises it with his half a hand. But his arm still won't work worth a damn so he props the head on his knee, finds the second pulse, slides his knife under and wiggles it about until he catches it between his knuckles and guides it home. Another big slice. This is no time to be stingy.
Then he sits back on his feet, feeling distantly the silver blade shifting, still stuck through his middle. Is that enough? Who declares the victor in these situations? Earth-black Qunari blood soaks his trousers at the knee. The blood drenching the front of his armor is his own. So much of it. Maker. He feels faint.
"QUNARI!"
Aveline's voice rings out steady and strong. With one eye he watches her stride out into the hall. "Your Arishok has been defeated in single combat! As agreed, you will cease hostilities and leave Kirkwall immediately!"
Someone crashes down at his side. "Fenris, get that sword out. Now."
Anders. And Fenris right next to him, grasping the sword hilt—
The pain is awful and all-encompassing. He blacks out for a moment, comes back to the sound of cheering. Cheering? From whom? Then Anders whispers, "Sorry, this is going to hurt."
Again. Wonderful. Anders jams a hand into the great gaping wound. There's a flash of heat. It does, in fact, hurt. Hawke tries to cry out and moans instead, his throat working as he swallows more blood. Something pulls tight around his bad arm. He grasps at Anders's robes with two and a half fingers. "Get. Get me out of here."
"We will, I promise. Just—shit, where are they?" he mutters, then rises and disappears. Fenris wraps a strong arm around Hawke's waist.
"Hang on!" Aveline hisses. "Fenris, I might need you in case they start acting up!"
"I must carry Hawke!" he shoots back. "Unless you'd like him to be dropped a half-dozen times on his way out!"
Hawke can't see Aveline too well—blood cascades from his gouged forehead into his one remaining eye—but he hears her exasperation. "Fine! Isabela, with me!"
Then Anders returns and slings Hawke's arm over his shoulders.
Hawke finds himself being dragged out of the hall.
"The viscount's office," Fenris says. "It is away from all this, and there is a desk to lay him on."
"Right. Maker, you're heavy." Anders staggers forward.
"I notice you are not healing him, mage."
"Of course I'm not! Do you want me to throw what little magic I have left at him before I've had a chance to take a look? I'll waste half of it!"
"That will be of little consequence if he dies before you deem any action to be necessary! In case you did not notice, he was very recently impaled!"
"Yes, I did notice, thank you very much! And not intervening right then and there was the hardest bloody thing I've ever done, except maybe carrying him—Maker's breath, Hawke, do you take cinderblocks with your meals?"
"The hardest thing you've ever done? Amazing, then, how you continue to not intervene, your power of will is truly astonishing—"
"Would you stop nagging at me?! I bought us some time with that spell in the hall!"
A brief hesitation. "How much time, then?"
"Oh, I don't know. Half a minute?"
"Hm," Hawke says, and opens his mouth to let the accumulated mix of saliva and blood there splash onto the floor.
"Hawke!"
"Almost there," Anders says. "Can you get the door? I'm about to drop him."
There's a splintering noise, and the door bangs open, the latch destroyed under Fenris's heel. "Is there any reason you seem to be in such good humor? Perhaps things are not as dire as I thought?"
"Oh no, I've no doubt things are very dire. Unbelievably dire. But I can either be this or a sobbing mess and I think I'm more helpful as I am now."
Fenris grunts and sweeps the viscount's desk clean, papers flying into the air, seals and ink bottles thumping on the carpet. Then he heaves Hawke onto the desk without ceremony. "You can begin now, mage."
"Yes, I know. All right, let's see..."
A white glow brims in the bottom of Hawke's vision, welling through the red. One of his eyes seems glued shut. He raises his good hand to rub at it, remembering as his knuckles meet oozing flesh that it's not there anymore. Right. Instead he scrubs at the other eye. Sticky. But he can see a little better.
"Hurts," he mumbles.
Fenris leans down. "What did you say?"
Hawke repeats it. "Hurts."
It does hurt. It all hurts as nothing he has ever known before. He is split open in the center. More foci of pain, scattered—the ache in his hip radiating in little spikes through the meat of his flesh. The axe-chop in his arm, below the tourniquet—Fenris's sword-belt, Hawke discovers, noticing the leather end curling over his chest. Half a hand missing. And his face, or what's left of it. A tearing sound. Fenris returns with a cream-white curtain, silk and shining. He starts to bundle it around the severed hand but Anders stops him. "Wait, I'm going to work on that next. Tie up the arm."
No more squabbling from them now. Fenris cinches the curtain just below the makeshift tourniquet. "Thank you," Hawke says, and swallows blood.
His stomach feels warm. Might hurt less now. Not sure. "All right," Anders pants. "Need to put these back on right now or he'll lose them for good."
Something touches the open surface of his right hand. He tries to gasp in pain, inhales blood, and starts coughing. His middle hurts again. Bugger. Then there's pressure over the wound, the great gaping hole in his gut. A dark band, like a shadow falling across his vision. Fenris, trying to staunch the bleeding.
Warmth in his hand. A white glow. "Almost got it..." Anders murmurs. "There. The flesh won't die now, at least. I can get them working later. If the cut weren't so clean that would have been a lot harder."
"His eye?" Fenris asks sharply. "Can you fix it?"
"I can try."
A fair hand descending, blotting out his vision. All goes dark. That's fine. He's tired. Maybe he should rest.
"Hawke? Hawke!" Anders shouts his name. "You need to stay with us!"
He squints. No more darkness. "Hm," he says again, and reaches for Fenris, who's still pressing on the gut-wound. But Hawke grasps his forearm weakly.
The hand over his eyes again. Burning, in the broken socket, the one filled with jelly and blood. His grip tightens a little.
"Oh, Maker..." Light blooms once more. "That'll do for now. I can finish later."
"Fenris," Hawke says.
"What? What is it?"
"Move. Now."
The dark, blade-narrow figure retreats from his vision. Good.
Hawke rolls on his side and throws up.
It's blood, he can see that much, a rusty brown-red staining the raspberry-pink of the viscount's carpet. Shouldn't have swallowed so much of it. But spitting it out with his mouth bashed in would have hurt, a lot. Like his stomach does at this very moment. Not just because he's throwing up. He's torn something, in the wound. He throws up some more. All blood. No, there's something else. Looks like a tooth. Two teeth. Maker. The Arishok must have really destroyed his face. He'll never be handsome again. What tragedy. Although he's starting to realize it won't matter. "Shit. Shit." That's Anders, his composure starting to give. He must be figuring out the truth of it, as Hawke just has.
Hawke flops down on his back again wetly. "Anders. You're a. Remarkable man."
"Shit. Hawke, stop talking, you're going to hurt yourself—"
"Bravest man. I ever met." Hawke takes a breath, carefully this time, so the blood doesn't go down his windpipe. "I've been. Lucky to. Know you."
"Damn it all, I told you to stop talking!" Anders's voice starts to fray at the edges as he begins working on the gut wound again. Hawke does feel badly about that. But he needs to say this.
He reaches out for Fenris, finds his hand, twines their fingers together. Hard to see now. Blood, yes, in his eye. But his vision's going dark at the edges. "Fenris, I care about you. So much."
"Hawke!" That's anger, a quick-rising squall. "You are not going to die!"
"I should've. Kissed you. Before the fight." He starts to grin and stops when it hurts. "But don't do it. Now. I'll just taste. Like blood."
Then Fenris is kissing him, which also hurts, although this pain Hawke doesn't mind in the least. When Fenris rises again his lips are smeared with dark red. "You cannot die," he says. "Do you hear me, Hawke? You cannot die."
Hawke thinks he can, if he tries hard enough.
Or even not at all.
Someone calls his name. He hears them once, twice. He doesn't hear them any more.
——
The Arishok looms.
Two broad stripes run down his neck and blaze on his chest. Hawke can't tell if they're blood or vitaar. White smoke billows around him in the silent dark. His eyes glitter like a riverbed, hidden beneath an endless current.
Hawke looks down at himself. That's not vitaar. That's blood. He's so weak. He crashes to his knees. The river parts around him, alive with bright silver trout.
The Arishok looms, his massive shadow falling over Hawke.
The Arishok kneels in the river.
Strange, Hawke notices. Despite all the blood, the water around them flows shining and clear.
——
He wakes very slowly.
Warm. He's warm. That seems good. If he were dead he'd expect to be cold. He hurts a little. Not a lot. He suspects moving will change that. The worst pain comes from a splitting headache. He's extremely thirsty. One of his eyes is pressed softly shut. The other he rolls to one side, then the other. There. A nighttable with a cup and a pitcher. And sitting beside it.
Fenris.
Asleep in an armchair. He looks exhausted. Best not to wake him. Hawke reaches for the cup. Ouch. That's the bad arm. Still, better than reaching across his body. Rather not split his gut open again. He gets his hand around the cup. Good. First step. He picks it up.
At that point he discovers most of his fingers still don't work. The cup slips from his grasp, bounces off the edge of the table, and falls on the floor.
Fenris wakes, blinks and rubs his eyes, finds the bed. For a second he says nothing. Hawke cringes, taking his hand back like a child caught in the midst of some prohibited act.
"Hawke, you're—"
Hawke waits for him to continue, and when he doesn't finishes the sentence. "Not dead? Is that right?"
"Yes. That is right." Fenris's normally reserved face breaks into an expression of such relief and happiness that Hawke's heart swells just looking at him. "The mage saved your life. You will make a full recovery, I'm told. In time."
"Anders? How is he?"
Fenris heaves a sigh. "He worked on you until he collapsed. Literally. I caught him before he could break his head open on the floor. He agreed to a brief rest but insisted I wake him after twenty minutes, as you were still in danger. We brought you back to the estate and repeated this cycle of collapse and resting a handful of times until I became suspicious and questioned him further. He admitted you were no longer in danger of dying but instructed me to wake him again as you were still fragile. I have not woken him."
"Oh. How long ago was that?"
Fenris glances at the window. Late afternoon. "Perhaps eighteen hours."
Hawke grins. Manages it this time. He probes his cheek with his tongue. Not sliced in half anymore. What a wonderful surprise. "That was good of you."
Fenris grunts, no doubt loath to admit any goodwill for Anders.
"Did he—" Hawke asks tentatively, "—did he say whether or not my teeth would grow back?"
"Oh. Yes, they will, in time."
"Thank the Maker. My winning smile has saved me from dozens of fights."
"Yes, you'll have all your teeth again. And also you are not going to die, which I would say is the greater victory."
"Trust me, I'm ecstatic on that front as well," Hawke replies. "Are the Qunari gone? Was there any more fighting?"
"No." Fenris sits back. "They have offered no more resistance. Aveline is overseeing the evacuation personally. She promised to visit as soon as it was done, but I have not seen her yet, so she is likely still at the docks."
Of course she is. "Maker. Does she ever sleep?"
"Rarely." Fenris sighs. "Unlike me, it seems. I apologize. I had meant to keep vigil."
"Fenris, you fought about a hundred Qunari yesterday." Hawke reaches out and grasps his knee. “You deserve a nap.”
For a moment they’re quiet. Hawke is still settling with the fact that he’s alive, and hasn’t even begun to process how he somehow managed to kill the Arishok and singlehandedly roust the Qunari occupation. Although it wasn’t really singlehanded—if it weren’t for his friends, he might have made it to the keep, yes (he knows Kirkwall’s streets as intimately as he would the face of a lover), but he certainly wouldn’t have gotten past the two dozen Qunari waiting just inside the doors, standing between him and the warchief.
Then he remembers something. “Er. Fenris?”
“Hm?”
“I am very thirsty.”
“Oh! Of course.” Fenris plucks the cup from where it’s fallen on the carpet and refills it from the pitcher. “Wait—let me help you.”
So Fenris sits him up against the headboard. It hurts. Very much. Hawke tries to suppress the grimace of agony and fails, too tired to manage it. Similarly, Fenris tries to suppress his expression of concern, but Hawke knows him too well and sees straight through the façade. “It’s all right,” he says, and takes the cup, in his good hand this time. “I’m alive. I’ll be fine.”
“Yes. I am…pleased. That you are recovering.”
Hawke tries to down the entire cup in one go and ends up spluttering most of it all over the bedspread as he starts coughing away. Fenris lurches forward in fear, but Hawke waves him off. "Fine—" he croaks, "I'm fine, stupid of me." His second attempt he takes much slower, and meets with success this time. By the time he's drained most of the pitcher, the headache has begun to abate.
"Are you all right?" he asks.
"Me?" Fenris says. "Yes, of course. You should worry about yourself, not about me."
Hawke just watches him. "Fenris, I saw you fighting. You got hurt."
He sighs. "Bruises, a few shallow wounds. The mage healed the worst of it on our way to the keep. I need only to rest."
"Good. I'm glad you're all right."
Another silence. Hawke strokes the think bandage wrapped around his middle. Impaled. The Arishok impaled him, through and through. And—he touches the bandage over his injured eye. That too, not to mention the hand, which has an ugly raised scar splitting it down the middle but at least all his fingers are back on. It could have been worse.
It could have been much, much worse.
"I shouldn't have done it," he mutters.
Fenris leans forward. "What did you say?"
Hawke clears his throat. "I shouldn't have done it. It was luck I won that fight. By all rights, the Arishok should have killed me. And I would never have seen you again. It was stupid. It was so bloody stupid."
Fenris cuts him off. "No, Hawke. It wasn't stupid. It was extraordinarily brave. You saved thousands of lives and ended in one night a war that could have dragged on for months. My anger at your choice was selfish and misplaced, and I must ask your forgiveness for my outburst."
Hawke is still for a moment. Then he drags himself to the edge of the bed, swings his legs out. Fenris, alarmed, stands. "You need to rest, you shouldn't be—"
Hawke takes his hand, tugs at it weakly. "Can you—come here—"
Fenris hesitates for just a second. Then he sits on Hawke's thigh (the one without a gash in it) and embraces him.
Fenris smells of lavender, and must have washed the blood off him here, used Hawke's soap. His body is hard muscle but the embrace is gentle, careful. Hawke holds him as if at any second he might be ripped violently away. The closeness is reminiscent of the night they spent together—not when they were together together, but after, when Hawke, with Fenris curled against him, found himself incongruously afraid. Of what lay between them, the depth of which was so great he had no doubt it could tear straight through all his armor and destroy him utterly in a mere second.
Or, as now, it could take his defenselessness, his unsettled terror, and cover them over with safety. With love.
Finally he pulls away, breaking with reluctance from the warmth of Fenris's body. "Fenris?"
"What is it?"
"I love you."
No reply.
Hawke hurries on. "I just—I needed you to know, in case I—" His words lurch and tangle, so he stops and tries again. "It doesn't have to change anything between us. I'm sorry."
Fenris smiles down at him. "There is no need to apologize." He leans down and kisses Hawke softly, and it is much less painful than the last time.
Then he stands and goes for the door. "The mage will want to know you're awake."
"Wait—" Hawke starts to lunge forward, but breaks off gasping when his gut pulls tight.
Fenris is there, steadying him. "I wish you would not do that," he mutters.
"Sorry. It's just—" Hawke looks up, plaintive. "You're coming back, aren't you?"
Fenris only stares for a moment, surprised. Then he puts on a curl of a grin. "Yes, Hawke. I will come back. No need to injure yourself in pursuit."
"All right. Good."
Then he's gone, and Hawke is alone.
He gazes at his right hand. Outside the cut the reattached flesh is discolored, dusky. He tries to make a fist, but even his thumb and second finger hardly curl. Might be the axe chop higher up. The bone still aches, but he doesn't think it's in pieces anymore. No awkward bend betwen shoulder and elbow.
He defeated the Arishok. Luck, he told Fenris. But that isn't all true, and he could tell Fenris didn't quite believe it either. He landed the poisoned knives. He stayed alive long enough for them to do their mortal work. It wasn't just luck.
So what does that make him?
The door bursts open. "Hawke!"
It's Anders, dressed for some reason in Hawke's clothes, which hang scarecrow-like from his thin frame. His hair is hopelessly mussed. Hawke can't help chuckling. Anders stares. "What? What is it?"
"You remind me of when Carver would raid my clothes before he'd hit his growth spurt." He holds his gut. Chuckling hurts. "And you sort of look like you've just had your head licked by a very friendly horse."
Anders combs his fingers through his hair. "Well, I'm sory my appearance wasn't my first concern," he grumbles.
"No, Anders, I'm sorry." Hawke immediately feels guilty. "I didn't mean anything by it."
"I know." Anders waves a hand. "Anyway, I had to steal your clothes. Your steward absolutely refused to let me touch any of the furniture until I was rid of every single speck of blood." He rubs his eyes. "Maker. I'm sorry I wasn't here earlier. Someone forgot to wake me up."
"I did not forget," Fenris replies. "I chose not to."
Anders glares, but his annoyance can't stand against the good spirits radiating through the room. "How do you feel?"
"Tired. In pain," Hawke answers. "But very much alive. Thank you. I really didn't think I was going to make it."
"Well, you almost didn't." Anders sighs. "Honestly, I'm amazed I could save you at all. You'd lost so much blood..."
The ghost of fear crosses his face, and behind him Fenris seems to waver a little. Hawke decides to put a stop to that. "I'm all right. The Qunari are gone. There's nothing to worry about."
"Nothing to worry about? I wouldn't be so certain." Anders nods at him. "You saved the city. You're going to be famous."
Hawke groans. He hadn't thought of that. "Shit."
Aveline visits a couple of hours later, confirming the bad news. They've given him a title. "The Champion of Kirkwall." He doesn't want to be called that. Every time he hears it he'll just think of that longsword gliding over the floor, silver and bright, a mere second away from impaling him through and through.
Although he supposes that's who he is now. He defeated the Qunari warchief in single combat. It might have been a fluke, true.
But he prefers to think it's not. "Champion of Kirkwall." Fine. He has plenty of weapons—daggers, throwing knives, speed, silence, alchemical flasks and poisons. The title will be another.
Fenris sleeps in the armchair that night, despite being offered a bed, or a spot in Hawke's own bed. Hawke wakes a couple of times in the dark, quiet hours, his uncovered eye always drifting to the armchair. He's lost his anonymity. Nearly lost a hand and an eye. He could go on without those.
But there are some things he will not lose. Another weapon? Good. Then he will learn to wield it.